Beginnings(With Artist Manifestos) _ DM.perspective(W1)

In his book The Structure of Art, Jack Burnham aptly points out the differences of what he calls 'formal' and 'historical' transgressions, and how these transgressions are dynamic ways that art can and does shift our focus. The rifts that these transgressions create is an opening for further understanding of art and culture - perhaps even leaps in consciousness. - 9P

This moment, while sometimes seemingly a formal transgression, offered enough of an insight into an entire system of art and media production that it should be considered more likely a historical one, developing new ways of understanding art production through tool production. Or, as Jack Burnham also wrote: '[The] cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called 'systems consciousness.'  

Historically, highly developed cultures embraced art and technology with equal respect, and with a reverence for both the sciences and the arts.Rather than creating disciplinary divisions and specialty areas of knowledge, cultures that expressed an interest in furthering a broad notion of 'knowledge' encouraged producers to embrace multiple areas of study at once.  

In contrast to this moment of early Islamic societies sophisticated consideration of the interconnectedness of all learning and disciplines, we find in contemporary Western culture a separation of the disciplinary studies of the sciences, philosophy, engineering, and art which potentially limits understanding of the world and natural phenomena.  - 10P

This professional rigor building fields of experts, also goes hand in hand with the goals of capitalism.

Martha Rosler writes: 'The aim of dada and surrealism was to destroy art as an institution by merging it with everyday life, transforming it and rupturing the now well-established technological rationalism of mass society'

For example, Dadaist and Surrealist visual artist Man Ray, who bought his first camera in 1915, experimented with various photographic chemical and lighting techniques such as rayograms, double exposure, solarization, and development methods using effects that broke from tradition and expanded photographic arts into new directions. 

This revolutionary work of breaking down boundaries and societal norms through art actions was also practiced by other contemporary art groups such as the Situationists International of the 1950s and 1960s, who had 'the wish to "multiply poetic subjects and objects" and "to organize games of these poetic objects among these poetic subjects'. It is the project of revisioning the world according to its smallest, most prosaic, everyday details and artifacts, then remaking the world on those same terms[...]'.

Later, another group, Fluxus, an international community of musicians, artists, filmmakers and writers under the leadership of George Maciunas, including artist Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, and Joseph Beuys, among others, grew out of the sentiments and actions taken by the Situationists, Dadaists and Surrealists: 'Fluxus was a typical avant-garde in its desire to deflate art institutions, its use of mixed media, urban detritus, and language; the pursuit of pretension-puncturing fun; its de-emphasis of authorship, preciousness, and domination' Honoring the artist Marcel Duchamp and musician/ composer John Cage, Fluxus work embraced 'chance' principles, playfulness and the unity of art and life, and focused on creativity and transformation.   -11P